Birds in a Thunderstorm A correspondent who saw my note
about the return of the wild geese to the Severn Dumbles writes me of the effect of a sudden thunderstorm in late November upon the abundant wild bird-life between Frampton and the mud-flats and sand-bars of the river. The air was a babel of terrified cries as well over a thousand geese sprange from the saltings in a huddle of wings and with them a multitude of curlew, lapwing, dunlin, redshank, mallard, widgeon and other duck, their voices at full pitch, their ranks stampeding in flying columns. What a superb ex- perience! I remember years ago hearing the husky roar, a kind of elemental plain-chant, of the guillemots on the cliffs of the Bass Rock, and the " yowrneris and yowlis " of the rest of the foulis, "With shrykking, screeching, skryming, scowlis And miklie noyis and shoutis."
I remember it all in what George Herbert called a " heart-deep " exhilaration. One of the pink-feet on the Dumbles showed a crimson blazon in flight, the tail-feathers being dyed as a mark of identification. It would be interesting to know whether it was marked this autumn on the Dumbles by Peter Scott or in Iceland this summer as a nestling by the same hand.
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